The role of phenotypic personality traits as dimensions of decision-making styles

Background: Each individual has unique personality traits which affect decision-making process. Those traits are defined as cautiousness, openness to experience, decision difficulty, agency, emotion neutrality, goal orientation, intuitive awareness, plan orientation, pro-activity, and rationality. Objective: The study aimed to show how established personality traits as dimensions of decision-making can be used to classify four distinct decision-making styles. The personality styles are defined as avoidant, designer, flexible, and auditor styles. Methods: A global survey was conducted to gather information on individual decision-making styles. Quantitative methods, such as tabular analysis, mean score equivalency test, correlation analysis, discriminant analysis and chi-square test for association have been used. Results: We found that there are significant gender differences in personality styles. This is partially due to the differences in emotion-neutrality scores among men and women. Female respondents are more emotional, a finding that is common in educational workers. Conclusion: The results reinforce that gender differences in emotions exist. For a socially interactive occupation such as education, being emotional might lead to better communication.